


A Different Kind of Death

by linndechir



Category: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Genre: Breathplay, Character keeps dying but it doesn't stick, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-02 12:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20739458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: Death was cheap in the life they lived, waiting around every corner, and most of the men Marquis had met in his life deserved it sooner rather than later. Chris Mannix more so than most.





	A Different Kind of Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).

Marquis had killed countless men like Chris Mannix. And he’d been damn close to killing Mannix himself more than once, even after Minnie’s, after they’d walked away from certain death through some mad trick of fate, after they’d started working together. When Chris Mannix died, absolutely nothing of value would be lost to this world. Any sane man would have a drink on that day and piss on the bastard’s grave.

Which was why it made no damn sense that Marquis felt red-hot anger rising up in him when he heard Mannix yelp and go to the ground, that he was in one hell of a hurry to take down that last outlaw they’d been hunting before he half-ran over to where Mannix had fallen. Two bullets in his gut, the kind that made a man bleed out slow and painful. One bullet right in his chest, the kind that killed a man before he hit the ground. Green eyes glassy and empty in the scorching sunlight, lips parted like he was trying to run his mouth even now. His neck was clammy with sweat and still hot when Marquis checked for a pulse, like he couldn’t tell a dead man when he saw one.

Death was cheap in the life they lived, waiting around every corner, and most of the men Marquis had met in his life deserved it sooner rather than later. Chris Mannix more so than most. And yet … a man got attached to the horse he rode, to the dog that followed him, to the murderous bastard watching his back. Marquis tried to tell himself that he was angry about someone else getting to kill Mannix before him, and he knew that wasn’t the reason at all.

Should have just left him there to rot in the sun. No bounty on his head, no reason to drag him back to town. But it didn’t seem right somehow, and Mannix being dead made Marquis more likely to admit that the man had in fact saved his life, twice, and maybe at least deserved a bit of ground over his rotting corpse like that sort of thing mattered. Clearly he was getting sentimental in his old fucking age, if he picked up a damn shovel and started digging a shallow hole. Besides, he couldn’t piss on his grave if there was no grave to piss on. He should have let that last asshole live long enough to dig the hole for him.

He wasn’t even halfway done when he heard rustling behind him, and then muffled cursing, and when he dropped the shovel and drew his gun while turning around, he saw Chris Mannix – dead as a doornail Chris Mannix, with a bullet through his heart – rise to his feet with that same confused look in his eyes as every damn morning when he blinked himself awake like a not very bright puppy.

It sure as hell wasn’t hot enough for Marquis to be hallucinating, and he sure as hell wasn’t so old yet he couldn’t tell a dead man from a living one. 

“Couldn’t you have pulled me into the shade, Major? You _were_ going to patch me up, right? On account of me doing that for you that one time at Minnie’s, remember?” Mannix said as if nothing had happened, cheerfully throwing himself into another long annoying rant, but then he interrupted his own stream of words like he’d only just noticed the hole in his chest – or rather the hole in his blood-soaked shirt that he poked his finger through, prodding at himself and not flinching in pain. Marquis stared, still wondering if he’d somehow lost his mind because none of this was making any damned sense, watched as Mannix pulled open his shirt to reveal his skinny white chest, smeared with blood and very much missing a bullet hole.

And because Chris Mannix only looked stupid and sounded stupid, but was actually a lot smarter than he let on, he looked Warren right in the eye and asked, “Did I just die?”

Like that was any reasonable kind of question to ask. But nothing about this was reasonable, so all Marquis said was, “Couldn’t have been any deader if they’d put another bullet through your head.”

Mannix looked like he was thinking – always a bad sign –, like he was turning this whole damn situation around in that ridiculous maze of his clever little brain, and when he seemed to have come to a conclusion, he pulled his backup revolver out of its holster and shot Marquis right in the chest.

Marquis woke up with something like phantom pain in his torso, and a hole in his favourite coat, and the fact that Chris Mannix was almost as good a shot as him at the forefront of his mind. Mannix didn’t miss, not at this distance. Marquis was very much not dead.

“I fucking knew it!” Mannix said, excited as a kid on Christmas, standing over him with that dumb grin on his face. He looked way too fucking happy for the situation, and Marquis made a point of not taking his offered hand when he pulled himself to his feet.

He looked at Mannix, and then down at himself, matching holes in their shirts right above the heart, clothes stained with blood, and not a wound in sight. A lot like they’d looked while stumbling out of a snowed-in haberdashery, dazed and blood-soaked and very much not dead. It hadn’t made sense then, and it didn’t make sense now. Marquis had never believed in miracles or gods or spirits or any of that horseshit, in curses or made-up supernatural creatures granting favours and offering deals. He believed in what he could see with his own two eyes, and what he saw was that death had slid off them both like rain off well-oiled boots.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Major!” Mannix said, because apparently not even death shut him up for long. “Yes, I shot you, but I was sure you’d be fine, considering that whatever this is is clearly going on with both of us and I’m perfectly fine, thank you for asking.”

Whatever else was about to come out of his mouth was cut off when Marquis grabbed him by the throat, tightened his grip and walked him back until Mannix’s back hit a tree with a low thud. Sometimes he liked keeping his gloves on when he did this – liked the way the texture made Chris squirm even more – but right now he was glad he’d taken them off earlier. Right under his thumb he could feel Mannix’s pulse, already speeding up. He was so easy it was downright pathetic – prod him a bit here, shove him a bit there, and he was hard in an instant, salivating for another touch like a dog for a bone. Marquis tightened his grip until Mannix gasped for air.

“You put a hole in my favourite coat, Chris Mannix,” he said. “Now you’re going to sew that up nice and pretty like any seamstress would, which I know for a fact you can do. You mess up them stitches, I’m gonna shoot you in places that hurt for a long time before they kill you, you hear me?”

Mannix nodded, far too eagerly, but that was mostly due to Marquis’s hand on his throat and the thigh he’d shoved between Mannix’s legs, keeping him trapped against the tree while Mannix rubbed against his leg a little, best he could when he couldn’t really move much. 

“Can’t hear you,” Marquis said and loosened his grip only enough for Mannix to gasp out, “Yes, sir.”

“There’s a good boy.” Marquis curled his fingers around Mannix’s throat again, pressed so tightly that he heard him gasp helplessly. He’d liked doing that since he’d first put his hands on Mannix – quickest way to shut him up, whether with his hands around his neck or his cock down his throat. Quickest way to get him off, too, didn’t even have to touch him anywhere else half the time, which suited Marquis fine because he didn’t particularly feel like doing Chris Mannix any favours. 

But for some reason he hadn’t actually _wanted_ to kill him most of the time, so he’d always had to hold back, let him gasp for air and whine and pant and complain a little. He’d put up with that all this time, with no clue that he could have killed Chris Mannix every damn night and still had him make coffee, suck his cock, and tie the most beautiful nooses in the morning.

He rubbed his thumb over Mannix’s pulse point, reddening the sensitive skin. That was the best thing about how pale he was anywhere but in his face – how easy it was to mark him up, to bruise and bite and scratch him up like a two-bit whore, to watch him kill a man with that perfectly steady hand of his while knowing just what he looked like underneath his clothes, roughed up and used like Marquis owned every last inch of him. He wondered if those small wounds disappeared when he died and came back, wondered if he could mark him up every night and have a fresh canvas back on the next.

Mannix strained against him, his lean body tense with what Marquis knew was an effort not to hump his leg, his throat bared, his expression the kind of wild-eyed excitement that meant that he was wondering about the same things Marquis was. Or at least something similar enough that it made no difference. Much as Marquis hated to admit it, they understood each other more often than not. Even if in this particular case, neither of them understood just how exactly this had happened at all.

All these years, Marquis had wondered how the hell they’d survived Minnie’s that night. How they’d walked away from there at all, Marquis with his balls intact and Mannix with a slight limp that had disappeared over the next days. It never would have occurred to him that they hadn’t survived Minnie’s at all. They’d both died that day, bleeding out all over each other, with their eyes fixed on the pretty sight of Daisy Domergue dancing on her noose.

They’d both died, but if there was such a thing as the devil, he’d spat them both right back out.


End file.
